A Year of Starry-Eyed Travels

Starry-Eyed Travels is a year old today! To celebrate, I have cake, streamers, balloons – and the chance to take a look back at just a few of the posts from the year.

It has been quite a journey – from its inception a year ago as a personal project, Starry-Eyed Travels is now read by people all over the world and has gained a team of fantastic guest writers. I have charted my own adventures and development from novice backpacker to well-seasoned traveller and hopefully provided stories and photos to inspire you along the way.

I can’t thank you enough for reading, supporting and getting involved with Starry-Eyed Travels – because of you, it has been one incredible year and I hope the next is just as good, if not better.

So help yourself to a piece of birthday cake, grab a glass of bubbly and enjoy a meander through the Starry-Eyed Travels archives!

From the very beginning, I wanted the posts on Starry-Eyed Travels to capture the unique, joyous moments of travel, so I wrote this post in order to encapsulate just that feeling – I hope it succeeded!

Very soon after I started Starry-Eyed Travels, I began to prepare for my first backpacking experience and hoped that by sharing my excitment and general preparations, I could help and inspire other novice backpackers.

Whenever I had time and a decent internet connection, I posted about my experiences ‘on location’ in South America. The first destination of my trip was Huaraz, Peru. This post gives some sense of what it is like there, but I did not know then just how hard I would fall for the Andean town.

On the plane back to Heathrow in October 2011, I whiled away some of the time by writing a list of things I’d learnt on my travels. I thought that some of them would be useful for other travellers – and hopefully entertaining! – so I created this post.

The New Year saw a new look for Starry-Eyed Travels and the start of monthly themes. In January, we looked at Landscapes, so I created this photo essay with just some of my favourite mountain views.

What’s Next?

Starry-Eyed Travels will always have inspiring, unique travel tales at its heart . But the rest is up to you – I would love to get your feedback, opinions and ideas for things you would like to see on the site. So please get in touch – either leave a comment below, or send me an email.

Here’s to the next year of Starry-Eyed Travels – I hope you’ll join me on the journey!